Among other answers which the czarowitz Alexis made to the first question put to him by his father, he acknowledges, that while he was at Vienna, finding that he could not be admitted to see the emperor, he applied himself to count Schonborn, the high chamberlain, who told him, the emperor would not abandon him, and that as soon as occasion should offer, by the death of his father, that he would assist him to recover the throne by force of arms. 'Upon which,' adds the prince, 'I made him the following answer: "This is what I by no means desire: if the emperor will only grant me his protection for the present, I ask no more."' This deposition is plain, natural, and carries with it strong marks of the truth; for it would have been the height of madness to have asked the emperor for an armed force to dethrone his father, and no one would have ventured to have made such an absurd proposal, either to the emperor, prince Eugene, or to the council. This deposition bears date in the month of February, and four months afterwards, namely, after the 1st of July, and towards the latter end of the proceedings against the czarowitz, that prince is made to say, in the last answers he delivered in writing:--
'Being unwilling to imitate my father in any thing, I endeavoured to secure myself the succession by any means whatever, _excepting such as were just_. I attempted to get it by a foreign assistance; and, had I succeeded, and that the emperor had fulfilled _what he had promised me_, to replace me on the throne of Russia even by force of arms, I would have left nothing undone to have got possession of it. For instance, if the emperor had demanded of me, in return for his services, a body of my own troops to fight for him against any power whatever, that might be in arms against him, or a large sum of money to defray the charges of a war, I should have readily granted every thing he asked, and should have gratified his ministers and generals with magnificent presents. I would at my own expense have maintained the auxiliary troops he might have furnished to put me in possession of the crown; and, in a word, I should have thought nothing too much to have accomplished my ends.'
This answer seems greatly strained, and appears as if the unhappy deponent was exerting his utmost efforts to appear more culpable than he really was; nay, he seems to have spoken absolutely contrary to truth in a capital point. He says the emperor had promised to procure him the crown by force of arms. This is absolutely false: Schonborn had given him hopes that, after the death of his father, the emperor might assist him to recover his birth-right; but the emperor himself never made him any promise. And lastly, the matter in question was not if he should take arms against his father, but if he should succeed him after his death?